Groups representing college fraternities and sororities plan to lobby Congress to make it more difficult for colleges to punish those accused of sexual assault on campus, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
An agenda reviewed by Bloomberg showed the groups plan to send students out on Capitol Hill on April 29 to convince lawmakers to require that campus sexual assault cases be resolved in the criminal justice system before a university can discipline the accused.
“Campus judicial proceedings” should be deferred “until completion of criminal adjudication (investigation and trial),” an e-mail sent to the students selected to lobby read, as quoted by Bloomberg.
The Fraternity & Sorority Political Action Committee, the North-American Interfraternity Conference and the National Panhellenic Conference are participating in the push, according to the report.
The Huffington Post also published audio from a Feb. 2 conference call in which leaders of those groups discussed the lobbying push. Fraternity representatives on the call suggested that colleges be allowed to adjudicate campus sexual assault cases by a standard of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, which is stricter than the “preponderance of evidence” standard many schools use.
But according to that report, representatives from the fraternity organizations hadn’t finalized specific plans for the lobbying push.
News of the their efforts came as fraternities across the country face discipline for members’ alleged misconduct. Pennsylvania State University’s Kappa Delta Rho fraternity was suspended last week after police discovered a private Facebook group to which frat members were allegedly posting photos of nude, unconscious women. North Carolina State University also placed its chapter of Pi Kappa Phi on interim suspension after students found a so-called “pledge book” containing disturbing statements about rape and lynching.
Fucking awesome. I’m gonna have to order like 5 tubs of that popcorn that comes in a big tin barrel with that divider thing in the middle and different flavors of popcorn. This si such a fan-fucking-tabulous opportunity for the GOPers/Teatrolls to fall all over themselves saying the wrong shit, proving their misogyny and losing female voters. Oh man…should be epic…
If something like this passes I want colleges across the country to then disband all fraternities and sororities.
" to require that campus sexual assault cases be resolved in the criminal justice system before a university can discipline the accused."
This is pretty transparent. Any lawyer worth a cup full of piss can delay that shit for a couple years while the kid graduates and the school loses any power to discipline him.
I don’t think it will ever pass Congress, but if fraternities begin to say it is there religious freedom to rape that’s being trampled-upon, expect the U.S. Supreme Court to grant them the right to act upon their “sincerely-held religious beliefs”, as with the Hobby Lobby decision.
The “rape lobbyists” is somewhat of an oxymoron, init?